HC grants anticipatory bail to Alagiri's son

The Madras high court on Monday quashed a non-bailable arrest warrant against Union Minister M K Alagiri's son Durai Dayanidhi and granted him anticipatory bail in the alleged multi-crore illegal granite quarrying scam.

Granting the relief, Jusitce C T Selvam of the Madurai bench of the court directed Dayanidhi to surrender his passport and also to appear daily at the Melur Police Station, where the case is registered against him, until further orders.

The NBW against Dayanidhi was ordered by Judicial Magistrate V Jayakumar at Melur in Madurai district on a police plea in October. Since then, a police team was on the look out for Dayanidhi.

Dayanidhi and nine others are facing charges that firms owned by them had mined sand and granite without permission.

On a complaint from the local village administrative officer, police had charged Dayanidhi and Nagarajan, partners in Olympus Granites Pvt Ltd, with encroaching on adjacent government land and taking away large quantity of granite illegally without quarrying in the permitted area and causing loss of Rs 44 crore to the government by illegal quarrying.

Cases had been registered under various IPC sections including 120(b) (criminal conspiracy), 447 (criminal trespass) and 420 (cheating) against them.

Government had cracked down on several firms after former Madurai Collector U Sahayam in a report, estimated the losses incurred from illegal granite mining at around Rs 16,000 crore.

Police had alerted immigration authorities to help them in preventing Dayanidhi and other accused from leaving the country. The companies' accounts had already been frozen.